Air tracing methods may be utilized to characterize air movement, air leakage, air exchange, and air distribution in buildings and other structures. An air tracing method can be viewed as having two related parts, namely, the tracer broadcast part for the release and subsequent distribution of the tracer (i.e., analyte) in air, and the sampling part for the collection and measurement of the tracer from a known volume of the air. The success of an analytical tracer technology depends on the compatible interfacing of these two parts.
Sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) is generally regarded as the standard agent to mix into and label an air mass for tracer studies, and it has been in use as a tracer since the 1950's. SF6 is not chemically reactive, is non-toxic at use concentrations, is not typically found in the ambient air, and it can be detected using infrared sensing technology at parts per billion levels in air. Nevertheless, despite its long and widespread use, SF6 is also the most potent of the known greenhouse gases, with a global warming potential 22,500 times that of carbon dioxide. SF6 is also extremely long-lived, having an estimated atmospheric lifetime of 800-3,200 years. Lastly, detecting SF6 utilizing infrared detection techniques typically requires that signals be averaged over relatively long periods of time, making the detection technique less sensitive to small temporal and spatial variations
For the foregoing reasons, there is a need for alternative systems and methods for performing air tracing measurements.